4- The Primary Purpose of Prayer

Colossians 1:9-12

 “From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Paul opens up almost all of his letters by telling the recipients that he has been praying for them, and this is what his prayers look like.

Isn’t it interesting that Paul doesn’t pray for a change in their circumstances? The churches he is writing to are living in a time of immense suffering, oppression, disease, and were facing and would face some of the worst persecution that Christians have faced to this day; yet, we don’t see Paul praying for their profiting, their health, or even their safety. What do we see him praying for?  He prays repeatedly that they may “know” God more.

Now this doesn’t at all mean that we should not pray for profit, health, safety, and all the other things that we think about; Jesus himself tells us to pray “Deliver us from evil” and Paul prays in 1 Timothy 2 for peace, good government and the needs of the world.  It does means that, in Paul’s eyes, those things are not the primary purpose of prayer.

What does it mean to “know” God? This word and idea is prevalent throughout scripture.

We learn with this word used in Matthew 11:27 that it is more than just having knowledge about something or someone

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

If “know” just meant having information about, then many people DID know the Son, but it means much more than that.

In Genesis 4:17, this word is used to mean the most intimate kind of relationship between Cain and his wife.

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.

In Hosea 13:5, we see it being used to refer to how God cared for the Israelites in the wilderness.

It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought

In Amos 3:2, we see it used to show how God had chosen the Israelites as his special people.

You only have I known of all the families of the earth

In John 10:14-15 & 27, we hear Christ being very clear and emphatic with this word and his people.

 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me.

Paul makes it clear how he values this in Phillipians 3:8

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

We see this word used in the negative light in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and Matthew 7:23

(He will come back) in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

And then I will declare to them, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

Keller says to “know God” is “to have the eyes of the heart enlightened.”

Ephesians 1:16-18

 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,  having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints

“Biblically, the heart is the control center of the entire self….. To have the eyes of the heart enlightened with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. In other words, we may know that God is holy, but when our hearts’ eyes are enlightened to that truth, then we not only understand it cognitively, but emotionally we find God’s holiness wondrous and beautiful, and we naturally avoid attitudes and behavior that would displease or dishonor Him.” -- Keller

Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18 that we may have the “power to grasp” God and all He has done for us. Paul does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. Prayer is a striving to (Isaiah 64:7) “take hold of God.”

We are to pray not primarily so that things in our lives will change, but so that we may know God more, which in turn will change everything in our lives.

Grace and Peace